


Sous cette lune d'argent

by eliza_romanova



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Domestic Violence, F/M, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, like a coffee shop au but not i guess, steve is a lonely old man
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-24
Updated: 2016-04-24
Packaged: 2018-06-04 06:54:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6646645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eliza_romanova/pseuds/eliza_romanova
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>We all have our secrets. </p><p>As the city sleeps, Steve starts to walk around New York, trying to remember what it's like to be human. </p><p>As the city sleeps, Clara is just a waitress, with a boring life and a boring boyfriend - at least that's what she wants people to think. </p><p>It's just some secrets are worse than others.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sous cette lune d'argent

Steve Rogers doesn’t sleep. He doesn’t really know why, but he can never force himself to sleep. It’s not insomnia, he feels tired, feels the ache of his bones pulling him into the earth, his eyes forcing themselves to close, but until he is at that point, he won’t sleep. He doesn’t sleep because he’s afraid. Not of his dreams, he never remembers them anyway, and even if he did they would pale in comparison to what he faces every day. No, he doesn’t sleep because he is afraid. He is afraid he will never wake up again, or if he does, he’ll wake up in a whole new world, and find out he has lost everything all over again. 

 

Steve Rogers doesn’t sleep. Instead, he walks around Brooklyn. He walks the streets he grew up in, all so familiar and strange at once that it unsettles him. It feels like a dream, where you recognise the landscape, despite never having been there before. He walks around New York, he walks around his home, and he draws. He always loved art. He wanted to go to art school, but there were fee’s to pay, and rent, and travel costs, and then a war. He could go now, he supposes, but it seems like the war hasn’t really ended, he’s still fighting it, Steve Rogers is a soldier now, not a scrappy young boy with a pencil. He likes to sketch, and then go home and turn his sketches into proper watercolours, with a posh set of paints Natasha left outside his door one day. She was good like that, she noticed things, and she did care, although she would hate to show it. Steve draws, and replaces his dreams with visions of a Brooklyn nobody else cares about, the empty beauty of it. He sketches dive bars and lamp posts and empty alleys. He draws, and he paints, and he imagines he’s home, that it’s the 1920’s, that there is no war on yet, only bills to pay and Bucky to talk to, and his Mother is still alive… 

Steve Rogers doesn’t sleep. He often walks in the same pathway, keeping to the same route, allowing his feet to wear out a new path in the concrete. He walks from his small apartment to what used to be downtown Brooklyn, to places he grew up in, to wear the old movie theater used to be, and to streets where he and Bucky would play, to where corner shops used to stand. He doesn’t go back to where his old house used to be, he couldn’t stand that, and besides, everythings changed now, and even though some areas are still poor, more and more often the rich are moving in and changing things from how they used to be. He doesn’t like that, so he doesn’t go there, preferring to stay in the rougher areas of New York, away from it all. He follows this route, almost nightly, and it becomes routine, in the same way he always used to pray. He learns the streets, and learns to relax in them. Sometimes it feels like dreaming, walking the streets alone. 

Steve Rogers replaces his dreams with drawings, drawings of the empty world that he feels truly at home in. They say New York is the city that never sleeps, but he finds quiet places, places where he can sit, and let the anxiety out of it’s cage beneath his heart, let his heart beat slow and his breaths become deeper and calmer. He sits on street corners, and sometimes he allows his eyes to close, but he does not sleep. The fear is still there, deep down, and he knows that he can sleep later, when he has too, when Natasha finds him and scolds him like a naughty school boy, then he’ll sleep, but for now, now he’ll stay awake for as long as he can. 

 

Steve can’t sleep, but he is tired, and it is starting to rain, and he has paused conveniently outside a 24 hour diner. Steve is impulsive, and stupid, and he steps inside. It wasn’t a nice diner, it was lit by fluorescent overhead lights, which flickered on and off occasionally, and the whole place stank of strong anti-sceptic. It was like the hospitals he visited sometimes, but far grimmer. He sat down at a small plastic booth, and pulled his cap down on his eyes. Despite there being only around five people in the diner, including waitresses, he would prefer not to be noticed. It was tiring being a ‘superhero’ all the time, and he didn’t want people judging him. He picked up a cheap laminated menu, and had just scanned it over, when a waitress came over.  
“Hi, I’m Clara, welcome to Dave’s All-nighter,” She said, her voice trying to be perky, but coming off as just tired. He didn’t blame her. “What can I get for you tonight?” She’s small, but everybody seems small to him now, and while she isn’t exactly pretty, her face is one you want to look at, at least from an artist's perspective, with big brown eyes surrounded by freckles and a thick eyebrows, and dark hair pulled up into a low ponytail, but it was starting to fall out. She seemed tired, with dark  
“Um, a coffee?” He asked, “I’m not good with names,” She rolled her eyes slightly as she looked up, and their eyes locked. There was a long pause, and her eyes narrowed fell open slightly as she took him in. He shook his head so minutely he didn’t think she’d seen, but she looked back down at her notebook.  
“Well,” She took a breath, “Um, well, there’s americano, that’s what people think of when they think normal coffee, cappuccino, that comes with foam and chocolate powder, latte, which is just all milk really, espresso, which is like a shot of caffeine and a macchiato, which is probably fancy in other places but here just tastes like a latte.”  
“And what does a latte taste like?” He asked, and the corners of her mouth twitched slightly, as if she found something funny, still not looking at him.  
“Honestly - not a lot. I recommend the americano as that’s the only thing our machine doesn’t mess up.”  
“Sure,” He said, “I’ll go for that then.”  
She wrote it down, and her eyes flicked up to look at him, strangely suspicious under the fluorescent lights. “I’ll be right back,” She tells him, and she walks away, back to the other waitress behind the counter, and he hears her ask something.  
\- Who’s that guy coming into a rundown diner at one in the morning?  
\- Oh nobody, just Steve Rogers - Captain America.  
\- What is he doing here?  
Then the speculation would start, the giggling and laughing and ‘subtle’ photos taken on phones. He is wondering whether he should just leave, when she comes back with his coffee, and puts it down.  
“One black americano,” She says, and she withdraws her hand, and pauses, and he can sense the question coming next. Are you Captain America? Can I get a photo? Can you sign my book?  
“Are you okay?” She says quietly, and the question surprises him. Surprisingly, he doesn’t get asked that often. Maybe after combat, sure, but that’s to check if he’s hurt. Never randomly like this, with what seems like a genuine worry in her eyes. “I don’t mean to intrude…”  
“No,” He smiles at her, “No, I’m fine.” He pauses. “Thank you,” He says, and he means it, he really does, and that surprises him as well.  
“Do you want to pay for the coffee now?” She asks, “Or will you be staying for more?”  
“I’ll pay now,” He says. “Probably shouldn’t be drinking caffeine at this time anyway,”  
She made eye contact again and smiled slightly, so small he could have missed it, before returning to look just at her waitressing pad. “That will be $2.30”  
He pulled out his wallet, and looked inside, and saw he only had ten dollar bills. That was a habit he’d picked up from Tony, and it annoyed him, but he handed it over anyway. “Keep the change,” he told her, and she opened her mouth as if to protest, but he shook his head. “I don’t need it anyway,” He said, and she bit her lip, but kept the note.  
“Is that all?” She asked, and he nodded.  
“Yeah, thanks,” He said, and she gave him another half smile and walked away. 

“Who was that?” Lynn asked as they watched the man finish his coffee then leave.  
“Nobody really,” Clara said, snapping out of her slight trance, brought on by tiredness and confusion, but she carried on staring at Captain America’s hunched shoulders as he left the diner. Clara had a lot of secrets, but this was the only one she had ever felt to compulsion to tell.

**Author's Note:**

> This is something I'm working on between exams but I have got three more chapters already written, so I'll see how people respond x Leaving kudos or a review would Make My Day


End file.
